Lock it Up!
The other day I witnessed a crime…
The wheels had “quick-theft” levers and the whole transaction was done in 2 minutes. Which made me wonder how many bikes are lost to poor lock-up jobs just waiting for the wrong person with the right tool to come along…
And if that doesn’t happen, there could be another fate waiting…
But in addition to having a strong lock you need to actually lock it to something secure. However that has become much easier here in Somerville lately:
So there is no excuse for this!
Yep, you can’t swing a bike tube in Boston without hitting a poorly-locked up bike. But I’m amazed at how often unsecured wheels with quick-releases _don’t_ get stolen — I’ll pass the same poorly-secured bike for weeks and the wheels will remain intact.
One potentially hidden hazard that many cyclists don’t think of is the _unsecured street sign._ One day I saw a bike locked to a street sign, and several hours later, the bike was gone, and the street sign was lying prone on the ground — it wasn’t actually secured in the cement and the thief just lifted the sign and absconded with the bike. So always make sure your street-sign-of-choice is actually connected to the street!
Excellent – and always humorous – illustrations of the way it tends to be too often. Biggest problem here is like the last panel – no secure fixture to lock to. Fortunately, my volunteer “job” allows me to bring my bike into the office; the rest of the time it’s always a challenge around town.
I hope that is our lovely bakfiets in panel 4 … though I’d love to see one of those cargo bike racks for real!
I do keep meaning to switch out those quick-theft levers on my crappy commuter bike…I sometimes rely too heavily on low quality for theft deterrence for that bike.
Great stuff, thanks for the great drawing and the laughs today
Hello, love the blog 🙂
I’d love to hear how it all played out. Did you step in and say something? I saw a guy the other day witha giant circular saw cutting off a U-Lock shotting sparks all over the sidewalk. I thought that’s just too blatent to be thievery, but I guess you never know.